Wednesday, January 13, 2010

One politicians solution to poverty - relabel it

A senator in the Washington state assembly has proposed to call poor children "at hope" children.

Sen. Rosa Franklin, D-Tacoma said the term "at-risk" was too negative, much like its predecessor "disadvantaged."

And before that, it was just "poor."

One of the rules of political correctness is that as soon as a PC term has gained wide acceptance and understanding, it must be replaced with something new and unfamiliar. That's because terms like "at-risk" describe negative things.

Poverty is a problem, and it can lead to some terrible things for those children. Any label we give it will soon be associated with poverty, and therefore become negative. So as soon as a normal person begins to associate the euphemism with its definition, it must be replaced.

Police used to search for a "suspect." Then it was someone "wanted for questioning." Because we heard those things enough times we had to come up with the clumsy "person of interest."

What's getting little attention is Franklin's reversal of the hyphen from "at-risk." Perhaps she has further plans to use all the hyphens freed up by this cosmetic legislation. More news on the hyphen will be posted here as it develops.